"[Greek: Nous pánta diekosmése]. Mind orders all things."
CHAPTER IX
THE DUNG-BEETLES OF THE PAMPAS
To travel the world, by land and sea, from pole to pole; to cross-question life, under every clime, in the infinite variety of its manifestations: that surely would be glorious luck for him that has eyes to see; and it formed the radiant dream of my young years, at the time when Robinson Crusoe was my delight. These rosy illusions, rich in voyages, were soon succeeded by dull, stay-at-home reality. The jungles of India, the virgin forests of Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes, beloved by the Condor, were reduced, as a field for exploration, to a patch of pebbles enclosed within four walls.
Heaven forfend that I should complain! The gathering of ideas does not necessarily imply distant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau1 herborized with the bunch of chick-weed whereon he fed his Canary; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre2 discovered a world on a strawberry-plant that grew by accident in a corner of his window; Xavier de Maistre,3 using an arm-chair by way of post-chaise, made one of the most famous of journeys around his room.
1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), author of the Confessions, La Nouvelle Héloise, etc.—Translator's Note.
2 Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), author of Paul et Virginie, La Chaumière idienne and Etudes de la nature.—Translator's Note.
3 Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852), best known for his Voyage autour de ma chambre (1795).—Translator's Note.